Howard Kurtz, a Washington media institution who has been covering the press for the Washington Post for two decades, shocked the media world Tuesday by announcing a jump to the Daily Beast, the two-year-old website edited by Tina Brown and owned by Barry Diller’s IAC.

Kurtz will serve as the Daily Beast’s Washington bureau chief, overseeing the site’s coverage of Washington and writing regularly on politics and media. He will keep his “Reliable Sources” show on CNN.

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Kurtz said he looked forward to building out the Daily Beast’s bureau in D.C.

“The Post management made it clear they did not want me to leave,” Kurtz told POLITICO. “And that made for a difficult decision. But ultimately, this felt like the right move.”

Kurtz’s move comes on the heels of other prominent members of the mainstream media jumping ship to younger web properties. Last month, the Beast’s competitor, the Huffington Post hired Howard Fineman away from Newsweek and Peter Goodman away from the New York Times.

When Goodman made his move from old to new journalism, he told Kurtz in an interview that it was because he wanted to write with a “point of view,” and had grown tired of “laundering” his views through think tanks and the like. But Kurtz told TBD.com’s Erik Wemple that he wasn’t leaving the Washington Post because he was chafing against the norms and rules of a daily newspaper, and would keep the tone of his reporting and writing much the same as what he has done over the years.

But he was looking forward to being able to shape the Beast’s site, something that would be tough to do at an operation as large as the Post, he said. “I am trying to be an online entrepreneur and that can be difficult in a big company that has an established way of doing things,” he told Wemple.

In his announcement on the Daily Beast website, Kurtz said: “After a lifetime in newspapers, I’m ready for the challenge of fast-paced online journalism.”

Kurtz has been at the Washington Post for 29 years, covering Congress and the Justice Department and serving as the paper’s New York bureau chief before settling into the media beat.

“I have great respect for Howard as a journalist and news-breaker, but I admire him most of all for his understanding of media and politics as the story of our era,” Tina Brown said in the statement. “He is that rare reporter with a metabolism that outpaces the frenetic subject he covers.”

The term "mainstream media" to describe the place he came from is a lie. There is nothing mainstream about the Washington Post. It is a national media but not mainstream. The national media ceased to be mainstream when it became part of the liberal Democrat party endorsing liberal causes and trashing Mainstream Americans who believe that the Constitution is the second most important document in this country. This writer considers the Christian Bible the most important document (book) in the country. NATIONAL MEDIA BUT SHRINKING

I respect Mr. Kurtz's opinions very much and always made it a point to watch his show on Sunday. Howie had a way of cutting through all the BS and showing media in the unflattering light that all people should view it in.

Reliable Sources is one of the few things worth watching on CNN now that Rick Sanchez is no longer around to laugh at.

I’m certain we all can agree the Washington Post is far to the left of center when crafting articles for its front page. And we should also recognize the Post has been a reasonably comfortable home for Howie for a number of years. That said, you have to admire someone who occasionally stumbles to the center of an issue without the slightest awareness publicly acknowledging, what we’ve all known for many moons, his true North, the selectively hard-left Daily Beast.

This article contains an astonishing admission from the NY Times' Peter Goodman about HOW the left-wing "reporters" slant the news: "When Goodman made his move from old to new journalism, he told Kurtz in an interview that it was because he wanted to write with a “point of view,” and had grown tired of “laundering” his views through think tanks and the like." Translation: Since so-called reporters can't disclose their own opinions, they selectively quote "experts" through academia, think tanks, etc., who just happen to agree with them. I used to wonder if these reporters were intentionally slanting their stories or not. Now I know. What a morally and intellectually bankrupt group of people. I'm glad the traditional statemedia outlets are collapsing.

I have enjoyed Howard Kurtz's work for years. If I only catch one news show on Sunday, it's "Reliable Sources." For me, Howard Kurtz is at the very center of the Media -- neither Right nor Left. In a media world where words often mean the opposite of actual behavior, e.g. Fox News' "Fair and Balanced," indeed "Reliable Sources" delivers.

Kurtz's work is the perfect vessel to examine the meaning of the "liberal press." When I examine his work, I am left with the strong impression that Kurtz struggles to get to the truth as well as it can be done in the Media. He neither lies by commission or omission. Does this make his work liberal?

Do I agree with everything he writes or says? Absolutely not! But, I don't doubt his integrity. Is that what is meant by liberal?

For me, Howard Kurtz's work is in the mainstream. ~ richard allbritton, Miami, http://rallbritton.com

You have to know when to" fold them" as Kenny Rogers likes to sing.. VanderHei,Mike Allan,John Harris and scores of other journalists bailed a lot earlier from the main stream media which is obviously in free fall.

Interesting. I'm sure a lot of good journalists who started at "dead tree" outlets would love to jump to great Web jobs, though it's a realistic goal mainly for those with star power, like Kurtz. Have to say that although he leans left -- and passes off moderate pundits as conservatives for purposes of his show -- his "Reliable Sources" is the only thing on CNN I still watch regularly. The media show "Fox News Watch" on FNC also is worth checking out, but it's only a half-hour program so much less in depth than Kurtz's.

The idea that Kurtz is liberal is just ludicrous. His wife is right wing media hack, Sherri Annis and his columns regularly seem to reflect the perspective of conservative position paper mills and GOP JHill staffers. the Post cheerlead the Iraq War and clearly wants to cut socila security. It isn't a liberal paper anymore. Kurtz probably belongs at Politico which ha sthe same insider, shallow reporting tilt. WaPo has the opportunity to replace him with a real media reporter, but I doubt that it will happen.